Roman Catholic churches are filled with idols. Mary is reverenced with far greater fervency than Jesus. Every “evangelical” or “Baptist” or “Protestant” who has said positive things about Rome and who has participated in ecumenical relations with Rome or who has failed even to lift his voice against Rome’s gross heresies will answer to God for the refusal to “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) and for keeping silence in the face of evil.
MARY QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE
The Roman Catholic Basilica of Mary, Queen of the Universe is located in Orlando, Florida, near Disney World. The basilica’s official brochure says it “emphasizes devotion to the Mother of God as one of the God-given gifts enabling us to reach that salvation for which Christ gave us His life on the cross.” Thus, according to this Catholic document Mary plays a role in salvation, which is a blasphemous lie. That Rome’s Mary is worshipped as queen of heaven is clear evidence that she is a Christianized pagan idol, for the only queen of heaven mentioned in the Bible is a goddess that the Jews were worshipping at the time of the destruction of the First Temple (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-25). The ancient mother-goddess worship, which began at Babel and spread throughout the world, was baptized by the Roman Catholic Church as the Madonna-Child.
________________________
For photos of Mary on God’s throne, Mary the Queen of Peace, Mary hanging on the cross, Mary surrounded by the apostles, and Mary on the ark of the covenant see the following:
www.wayoflife.org/database/maryolatry.html
“Mary on the cross with Christ, Poland”
She’s not “on the cross”. She’s holding her Son BEFORE the Cross.
“Mary on the cross with Christ, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome”
Mary’s not on the cross (note she would have to be nailed to it or tied to it for that to be the case). She is merely portrayed with the cross as a stand for her statue.
“This statue depicts Rome’s dogma that Mary is the co-redemptress with Christ and that she intercedes for men from Heaven and aids in their salvation.”
No, it does NOT show that Mary is co-redemptrix.
I realize that many Protestants are simply ignorant about religious art - because they have been raised to hate beauty, but there is no reason to be stupid on top of ignorant.
No less a Protestant authority on art than the Protestant Ralph Adams Cram once wrote:
“From the outbreak of the Protestant revolution, the old kinship between beauty and religion was deprecated and often forgotten. Not only was there, amongst the reformers and their adherents, a definite hatred of beauty and a determination to destroy it when found; there was also a conscientious elimination of everything of the sort from the formularies, services, and structures that applied to their new religion. This unprecedented break between religion and beauty had a good deal to do with that waning interest in religion itself. Protestantism, with its derivative materialistic rationalism, divested religion of its essential elements of mystery and wonder, and worship of its equally essential elements of beauty. Under this powerful combination of destructive influences, it is not to be wondered at that, of the once faithful, many have fallen away. Man is, by instinct, not only a lover of beauty, he is also by nature a ‘ritualist,’ that is to say, he does, when left alone, desire form and ceremony, if significant. If this instinctive craving for ceremonial is denied to man in religion, where it preeminently belongs, he takes it on for himself in secular fields; elaborates ritual in secret societies, in the fashion of his dress, in the details of social custom. He also, in desperation, invents new religions and curious sects working up for them strange rituals . . . extravagant and vulgar devices that are now the sardonic delight of the ungodly. ... If once more beauty can be restored to the offices of religion, many who are now self-excommunicated from their Church will thankfully find their way back to the House they have abandoned. The whole Catholic Faith is shot through and through with this vital and essential quality of beauty. It is this beauty implicit in the Christian revelation and its operative system that was explicit in the material and visible Churches and their art. We must contend against the strongest imaginable combination of prejudices and superstitions. These are of two sorts. There is first, the heritage of ignorance and fear from the dark ages of the sixteenth century. I am speaking of non-Catholic Christianity. Ignorance of authentic history, instigated by protagonists of propaganda; fear of beauty, because all that we now have in Christian art was engendered and formulated by and through Catholicism; fear that the acceptance of beauty means that awful thing—’surrender to superstition.’ It is fear that lies at the root of the matter, as it does in so many other fields of mental activity.” (Radio Replies, vol. 2: 1052)
And still they deny that they worship Mary. They have eyes but they cannot see, and ears but they cannot hear.
BUMP
God gives richly, but for some it isn’t enough. They want more redeemers. Jesus just isn’t enough.
Thanks, RB, for the pictures. I’ll be using some of them again. They are wonderful!!
This is the stupidity of low information Christians.
Protestant’s have no business telling Catholics what is God’ Word. It was through Petrine authority that the Catholic Church assembled the books in the Bible by referencing what are both the authentic WRITTEN texts and the ORAL TRADITION (Jn. 21: 25). Before the torrential mudslide of Protestantism there existed the Church that in the Synod of Rome AD 382 set forth what was God’ true written Word.
That infallibility did not evaporate ELEVEN centuries later with the evil of Protestantism where every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their grandmother and the Rev. Jeremiah Wrights and the Joel Osteens and Biily Grahams of this world get to crack open the pages of the Bible and purport to authoritatively pronounce the true word of God. This is more than risible, its a caricature of Protestantism where mainline denominations now allow for married gays and lesbian pastors as an authentic teaching of an all inclusive scriptural interpretation.
Little wonder that leading Episcopalian and Protestant theologians have converted to Catholicism leaving low-information Protestants stranded in the pews. It happened with Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn, Tammy Fave Baker, Creflo Dollar, an the list of other nuts who try to tell us what is God’ true Word.
The Church and the Church alone is the final deposit of God’s infallible word. Those who doubt the infallibility of the Church today must then logically have doubts about its infallibility in AD 382 when it assembled the authentic written Word of God. That authenticity did not disappear into the ether with the multitude of contrary interpretation of God’s Word unleashed by Protestantism.
The Miracle at Cana tells it all as well as the last words of Christ on the Cross. No Protestant interpretations needed here either by lay folks or pastors of neighborhood Foursquare churches. Just pick up a book by the great theological Einstein of our times, Benedict XVI or the the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s “Life of Christ.” The Catholic theological and intellectual traditions cannot ever be matched. Never.